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US's big bet on quantum computing may not be legal

arstechnica.com

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Re: US's big bet on quantum computing may not be legal

#71

Post by airstrike »

dylan604 wrote: post #67
monooso wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not GP, but in this context I would interpret the next administration[^1] holding the current administration to account as a willingness to use the court system to prosecute actual crimes committed while in office[^2]. That is by no means a given. [^1]: Assuming there is one. [^2]: That is, not petulantly prosecuting those deemed to have slighted you.

SCOTUS has already given POTUS immunity in any form other than impeachment followed by a conviction. The problem with that is that just removes POTUS from office. It does nothing to punish for those crimes that were deemed worthy enough of being impeached/convicted. SCOTUS said that POTUS cannot be held accountable for things done as official acts of office. So Congress cannot hold POTUS criminally accountable, but r…

> SCOTUS has already given POTUS immunity in any form other than impeachment followed by a conviction.

That's not exactly accurate and that nuanced difference may be the key to holding the executive branch accountable, now that we're in this disastrous state of the world.

Re: US's big bet on quantum computing may not be legal

#72

Post by voidfunc »

mostlysimilar wrote: post #54
stymaar wrote: post #49

For the past year and a half, the US administration have plunged the country in a rule of law twilight zone: the rule of law still exists, and there are still independent jurisdictions to enforce it, but the administration decided they didn't care, and they just overcome any court dismissal of their orders with a new illegal order that courts will have to push back a few month later. Which means that, in practice, th…

The future of the US depends on these people being held accountable by the next administration, and structural reforms to make their abuses harder to do again in the future.

This won't happen. Mostly because the next administration that is a counter to this current administration won't happen. The electoral process in the US is effectively cooked.

Re: US's big bet on quantum computing may not be legal

#73

Post by pavon »

upofadown wrote: post #24

>That technology overlaps only partially, at best, with what’s used in quantum processors. Dunno, how can you say that for sure when we don't actually know how to make a practical quantum processor? The bigger issue is that we are scaling up manufacturing of approaches that have not been made to work. I remember a meeting where the project manager pointed out that we were due to send some test boards to a customer. I…

The funding isn't going towards some hypothetical future practical quantum processor, it is going towards existing approaches that we know have different technology, manufacturing processes, and most importantly different applications than the Chips Act was targeting. Funding quantum computing research might be a good thing, but it doesn't make us any less dependent on foreign silicon manufacturing for the countless uses of computer chips across existing industry, which was the purpose of the Chips Act.

Re: US's big bet on quantum computing may not be legal

#74

Post by autoexec »

voidfunc wrote: post #72
mostlysimilar wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The future of the US depends on these people being held accountable by the next administration, and structural reforms to make their abuses harder to do again in the future.

This won't happen. Mostly because the next administration that is a counter to this current administration won't happen. The electoral process in the US is effectively cooked.

That's the big worry now. We've got to wait to find out if we still have a democracy or not. They're trying to stop us from being able to vote them out of power. Even if they're unsuccessful it just means we have a chance to put things right, but the democrats are the party of the status quo and I haven't really seen them stepping up and promising accountability.

Re: US's big bet on quantum computing may not be legal

#75

Post by wingspar »

stymaar wrote: post #49

For the past year and a half, the US administration have plunged the country in a rule of law twilight zone: the rule of law still exists, and there are still independent jurisdictions to enforce it, but the administration decided they didn't care, and they just overcome any court dismissal of their orders with a new illegal order that courts will have to push back a few month later. Which means that, in practice, th…

I recall this precedent was set previously under Biden (likely sooner).

Biden admin lost CDC eviction prohibitions case and immediately enacted new slightly different prohibition and Biden defended the effort as it would take time to be stopped.

“Whether that option will pass constitutional measure with this administration, I can’t tell you. I don’t know,” Biden said. “There are a few scholars who say it will, and others who say it’s not likely to. But, at a minimum, by the time it gets litigated it will probably give some additional time while we’re getting that $45 billion out to people who are in fact behind in the rent and don’t have the money.”

https://thehill.com/policy/finance/housing/566230-biden-buys...

Re: US's big bet on quantum computing may not be legal

#76

Post by kube-system »

upofadown wrote: post #24

>That technology overlaps only partially, at best, with what’s used in quantum processors. Dunno, how can you say that for sure when we don't actually know how to make a practical quantum processor? The bigger issue is that we are scaling up manufacturing of approaches that have not been made to work. I remember a meeting where the project manager pointed out that we were due to send some test boards to a customer. I…

The issue at hand is what the money is being spent on today.

Re: US's big bet on quantum computing may not be legal

#79

Post by mc32 »

stymaar wrote: post #49

For the past year and a half, the US administration have plunged the country in a rule of law twilight zone: the rule of law still exists, and there are still independent jurisdictions to enforce it, but the administration decided they didn't care, and they just overcome any court dismissal of their orders with a new illegal order that courts will have to push back a few month later. Which means that, in practice, th…

The previous admin also ruled via executive order. It said it would find ways to do things even if struck down by the SCOTUS such as the school loan forgiveness, firearms controls, speech suppression via “embeds” etc.

Re: US's big bet on quantum computing may not be legal

#80

Post by ks1723 »

downrightmike wrote: post #59
kennywinker wrote: post #8

I don’t know enough about the state of quantum computing but this sounds like IBM dumping dead end research onto taxpayers

Its all made up computation to fit the problem exactly. No real progress has been made in decades. "Similarly, quantum factorisation is performed using sleight-of-hand numbers that have been selected to make them very easy to factorise using a physics experiment and, by extension, a VIC-20, an abacus, and a dog." https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2025/07/cheating-on-q...

This is just not true. There has been tremendous progress in the field. Starting with google’s experiment in 2019 on showing quantum advantage - admittedly on a useless problem, but quantum advantage nevertheless, to fault tolerant encodings by the Harvard group to recent demonstrations of a road toward advantage in generative models by goggle, to name a few. It’s still far away from running Shor’s algorithm to factor relevant numbers and break RSA and the like, but even there dramatic progress is being made, see, e.g., https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=9665
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